on reading - carl sagan

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts
(still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One
glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps
someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the
author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to
you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding
together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one
another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can
work magic.

- Carl Sagan

from unexpected places - vintage astronomy prints

These are from Etsy's Antique Print Store.  What kind of characters
would own them?  What kind lived through some of these spectacles,
lives forever changed by wonder?  Are any of these characters yours?

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
- Carl Sagan

Ziva Comet, 1858

Comet Nuclei, 1940's